Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill (born November 11, 1954) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993, 2006, 2012), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998, 2008). 2Life Gaitskill was born in Lexington, Kentucky. She has lived in New York City, Toronto, San Francisco, and Marin County, CA, as well as attending the University of Michigan, where she earned her B.A. and won a Hopwood Award. She sold flowers in San Francisco as a teenage runaway. In a conversation with novelist and short story writer Matthew Sharpe for BOMB Magazine, Gaitskill said she chose to become a writer at age 18 because she was "indignant about things—it was the typical teenage sense of 'things are wrong in the world and I must say something.'" Gaitskill has also recounted (in her essay "Revelation") becoming a born-again Christian at age 21 but lapsing after six months. She married the writer Peter Trachtenberg in 2001. They separated in 2010. Gaitskill lives in Pennsylvania and teaches for the MFA program at Temple University. 2Works Gaitskill made her book debut in 1988 with the short-story collection Bad Behavior, having been trying to publish her work since the age of 2